


the waiting room

by eggnoobles



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Afterlife, Dream Team SMP Angst (Video Blogging RPF), Existential Crisis, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, L'Manberg War of Independence on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Vivifica AU, but respawning is a thing so it’s okay, i’m gonna be dead honest i don’t know how to tag this one lads, takes place during/at the end of the l’manberg war, the sbi are adopted/found family in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28826952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggnoobles/pseuds/eggnoobles
Summary: tommy’s entirely alone, in an unfamiliar place with seemingly no gravity, and he has no memory of how he got there.alternatively: tommy fucking dies.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Kudos: 59





	the waiting room

**Author's Note:**

> hi hello, if you’re reading this then thank you so much for taking interest in my shit lol. just a few warnings beforehand:
> 
> 1\. this is part of my personal au for the dream smp/related smps, called the vivifica au. i have posted basically nothing about the lore of vivifica on here, so unfortunately this fic might not make a lot of sense. regardless i hope you enjoy and please feel free to hmu with any questions you may have about it cause i do enjoy talking about the AU B)
> 
> 2\. just in case: minor TW for mentioned/implied character death, and afterlife/existential bullshit

tommy has woken up in strange places before.

being an overworked child soldier does that to you sometimes- passing out from exhaustion anywhere that’s comfortable. under the camarvan, on a horse, in houses that weren’t his own. wilbur had once sworn to make a list all of the random places he’d found him and make sure tommy could never live down the more obscure ones.

the void was probably new, though.

at first, he wasn’t even aware that he was awake. the only thing that met his eyes was endless black, as if he’d never opened them, and he couldn’t hear anything besides… well, he actually wasn’t sure what he was hearing. it was like a thick, deafening silence, the kind that feels like pressure on your ears without a single sound.

tommy exhales, and a small flurry of air bubbles escapes him and simply floats outwards before dissolving. the silence remains unbroken.

he looks down at himself- no uniform, no weapons or armor. only his usual red and white shirt and khaki pants. his hair is floating freely, as if he were underwater. the gears in his brain slowly start to turn as he finally absorbs the gravity of the situation.

tommy’s entirely alone, in an unfamiliar place with seemingly no gravity, and he has no memory of how he got there.

“hello?”

he can feel the words leave his mouth, his lips forming them as he tries to speak, but no sound comes out.

“is anyone there? where the hell am i?”

 _am i dead?_ he stops himself before he can even say it. if he was dead, then what would happen next? god, what would happen to tubbo and wilbur? what would happen to l’manberg? did dream have his discs already?

he couldn’t accept that.

something in the air ( _water?_ ) shifts, and he turns to his right.

tommy has looked in a mirror before. this was nothing like a mirror.

stretching out in a line as far he could see, was himself. duplicated hundreds, even thousands of times, and staring right back at him.

to his left, the same. the clones remain completely still, only moving slightly to follow him with their gaze. something about all of it makes his skin crawl- tommy knows better than anyone else how much he loves to joke about how great he is, but this had to be some cruel prank.

they could have been watching him for minutes or for hours, he couldn’t tell, but when they finally look away it was nothing short of a relief.

and then a noise rings out, a horrible creaking like a thousand doors opening, and they move.

here is how it goes, time and time again.

in front of each duplicate tommy is a now-opened door, and through that door is only pure white light. each of them seems to be equally confused about their circumstances, and none of them seem to notice the others surrounding them, let alone the original tommy’s existence.

most of them go through the door with no hesitation. some of them contemplate it, then step through.

a few turn around and walk the other way, letting the void swallow them whole.

tommy pieces it together pretty quickly. the door is life, the void is… not life.

soon enough, all of the extra tommys have disappeared in one way or another, and he’s left alone without even a door to go through.

_well, almost alone._

two of them remain, having not moved a single inch and still watching him from either side. as he peers closer at them, he realizes they’re not the same as the others- one is tinted blue, the other green, and the hue only grows as they being to step towards him.

they stop at an arm’s length, eyes empty of pupils and forms glowing with pure color and light.

“who are you?” tommy knows they won’t be able to hear it, but it’s worth a try anyway.

however, this time tommy’s own voice echoes back at him- the green one repeats what he said and the words are nigh-painfully loud in his ears.

“i’m tommy- wait, no, you’re me, don’t you know that already?”

the blue figure laughs, and it’s like wind chimes, echoing and repeating long after they’ve stopped.

“ _i’m not fucking joking!_ what do you want from me?! what were all those clones?”

this time, it’s blue’s turn to speak with his voice.

“they are you. every different version of you, condensed into one place.”

“oh my god, am i dead right now? is this hell? cause if it’s hell, i know i did a lot of crazy shit, but it was _funny_ , okay? you can send me back now!”

both of them were silent, grinning with some sort of sick amusement at his confusion. the reflections of his own face give way to pure light, shifting into blurry, humanoid forms in their respective colors.

“you’ll go back soon. best ask the questions that really matter.” green advises him.

“okay, you pretentious asshole, what are you?”

the green reflection blinks once, slowly.

“you already know.”

tommy grips his hair in frustration- the two were making less sense by the minute, and every question somehow got him further from an answer.

“ _how?_ how do i know?,” he pleaded. “have i been here before, did i die already? why can’t you just tell me?”

blue shifts behind him. tommy decides he likes them better- they were more straight to the point than green.

“you will know, and you have learned the concept before, in more… three-dimensional terms.”

“ _what?!_ ”

blue huffs. “this is difficult for you to understand, and even more difficult for us to explain in a way that you’ll be able to accept.”

“then show me!”

blue’s figure shifts again, this time to someone younger than him. pink hair, barely-there tusks, cracked glasses on the face of someone too stubborn to fix them-

“tommy, pay attention. i’m trying to teach you somethin’ here.”

somewhere, a cricket chirps.

“tommy! tommy, are you even listening?”

the blackness gives way to leaves and tilled soil, ripening vegetables and dewdrops and the firm feeling of a hand shaking his shoulder.

tommy kicks at another pebble, groaning. “i don’t care. math is boring, anyways. can’t you just leave me alone?”

techno flips to another page in the textbook. “oh, yeah, let me just ditch you and then sit through another philza lecture on why we can’t keep ignoring the letters from the city’s teachers, nagging him on why you don’t know long division or geometry yet. _that’ll_ be fun.”

they’ve been at this for hours now, the sun already beginning to set past the distant ocean and the mosquitos trading places with the bees and moths that usually graced their backyard garden.  
tommy silently curses the fact that he wasn’t simply spawned like phil or tubbo- they may not have _parents_ , sure, but they also never had to learn basic mathematics. and yeah, he knows that if he actually tries to listen to techno the whole lesson will end faster, but when has tommy ‘motherfucker’ innit ever let someone boss him around?

never, and certainly not now.

( _why is he here, again?_ )

“just look, tom.” techno begged. the exasperated tone of his voice almost made tommy feel bad. almost. “here, this one’s actually a little bit cool.”

“how cool?” tommy mutters suspiciously. he glances at the image his brother is pointing at anyway, if only for a moment.

“they’re parallel lines.”

“so?”

“so, listen to this.

‘parallel lines are lines in a plane which do not meet; that is, two straight lines in a plane that do not intersect at any point are said to be parallel. colloquially, curves that do not touch each other or intersect and keep a fixed minimum distance are said to be parallel.’”

techno closes the book and grins at him, voice dripping with familiar sarcasm. “pretty intense stuff, if you ask me.”

“what does that even mean?”

“it _means-_ ” techno rose, grabbing two sticks off the ground and drawing the same lines in the dirt- “that no matter how long they stretch on for, they’ll never touch.”

he traces the lines all the way to the edge of the fence, then stops and looks over his handiwork. they weren’t quite even lines, but the point got across.

“never?”

“yup.”

“so you could just keep going forever, and they’ll never meet up.”

“probably, yeah. unless you’re really bad at drawing straight lines.”

tommy frowns. “i don’t like that, it sounds sad. they’re just stuck like that for eternity.”

“i don’t think a couple of lines care much about their infinite existence, tommy.”

“you don’t know that! maybe they’re married, or something. you just insulted a married couple.” tommy stands up and draws another pair of lines, this time curving in opposite directions. “look, they’re getting a divorce now.”

“are you insinuating that there’s a parallel line society with marriage laws? parallel line divorce court?”

“i’m saying you’re an absolute monster. techno t. blade, destroyer of happy relationships.”

that one actually got a laugh out of him. “i bet the lines are quivering in fear, huh?”

“yeah, one look at your fugly face and they’re already pissing themselves.”

“at least tell me you learned something from this.”

“sure did! in fact, i don’t think we need to do this ever again!”

“do you understand now?”

“huh?”

blue repeats the question. “did that help you understand?”

“i don’t…” tears pricked at his eyes, something in his heart aching at the sight of his brother, his friend, his mortal enemy. the scene was gone before he even realized it. “why did you show me that?”

“we’ve said this. you’ve learned about us before.”

he wipes away the tears quickly and tries not to think about the long-gone memory. things weren’t like that anymore, he hadn’t seen techno since smpearth, and hadn’t been on good terms with him for even longer.

it didn’t matter. what blue said gets him thinking. “… are you like parallel lines? you go on forever, or some shit?”

“closer.” green murmurs.

“ _or some shit_.” blue nods sagely.

“okay, gimme another hint.”

green cocks their head. “what is the opposite of life?”

“death?”

“and what is the opposite of order?”

“chaos.”

“warm?”

“cold. what’s your point? ”

green smiles and points at themself, then at blue.

“wait, wait. are you saying you’re life and death? am i getting my soul weighed or something?”

“sort of.”

“not that specific.” blue chimes in.

“no.”

tommy scrunches his eyes closed and racks his brain for more theories. the clock was ticking, he knew, but he barely felt closer to figuring the two out.

“you’re opposites, though. you don’t overlap.”

now it’s green’s turn to change, shifting to a face and figure he hasn’t seen in over a year now, a voice he would rather forget.

“there you go!” a shimmering green phil smiles at him. “you’re getting there, keep going.”

“are you good and evil, then? which one of you is all the bad shit?”

“both of us.” says green/philza.

“neither.” blue says at the same time.

“that makes _no_ fucking sense, you just told me you guys were opposites! now you’re the same?”

blue shifts again. a beanie, a trench coat, a mess of brown hair over darkened eyes. this time, tommy isn’t quite sure who he’s looking at- he knows it’s wilbur, but he’s never seen wilbur looking so… unlike wilbur. his eyes and stance hold no warmth, his grin more condescending than usual.

“good and evil are far too subjective to be opposites, _tommy_. i thought i taught you better than that.” not-wilbur sneers, pacing in a circle around him.

“keep trying, you have to go soon.” philza walks in a circle parallel to not-wil, and something clicks.

not once had he seen them touch, not once did they even come close. always avoiding each other but still stuck together. he used to mess with fridge magnets when he was little, trying as hard as he could to push together the wrong ones.

parallel lines, that was the point. opposite sides of the same coin.

tommy sees flickering visions behind his eyes, a million sunrises and sunsets over a country he loves but doesn’t know yet,

“you’re just… everything, but as two parts. everything’s split into two sides, black and white, is that what you two are?”

green shifts into tubbo, clapping with excitement.

“ _you’ve got it!_ ’ he cheers, genuine joy in his voice. “you’ve come as close as you can without melting your own brain! that’s really impressive!”

“okay, okay, cool. so then why am i here? are you trying to teach me some lesson?”

“everyone comes here, eventually. some just don’t stick around long enough to speak with us.”

“i’ve never heard of you before, though.”

both of them change back to their featureless forms, squirming light arranged into the vague shape of a human.  
( _something about the constant shifting reminded him of someone he would see eventually, a sensation that drove his brain mad trying to keep up._ )

“once you leave, you won’t remember us until you come back to the waiting room.” is blue’s answer.

“mortals aren’t meant to spend too much time thinking about this place.” is green’s.

“you mean, until i die again. when’s that?”

“the answer to that is already within you.”

and maybe he’s spent far too long here and the conversation has rotted his brain, but when he thinks about it, it almost makes sense. the flashes of green and blood and swords clashing clouding his vision tells him all he needs to know- he won’t go down without a fight, and that is enough to settle something in himself.

at least he’ll still be himself, in the end. at the very least he’ll be luckier than wilbur, though he doesn’t know what that means yet.

“you were very distressed before you visited us this time. are you calm now?”

tommy ponders it.

“yeah. yeah, i think so.”

“then our job is done.” they say in unison. “are you ready to go home?”

he shakes his head suddenly. “wait, no, what? you’re leaving me?”

“we aren’t leaving. we’ll always be here.” blue reassures him.

“you’ll see us again. next time, we’ll take you with us.” green adds.

“but i don’t- i don’t know what i’m supposed to _do_! weren’t you supposed to give me some kind of advice for the future, so i don’t mess up?”

blue presses a hand to his shoulder, and their face cycles through several comforting ones in the blink of an eye- friends and family he’d practically forgotten about and couldn’t wait to meet.

“everything you need is already within you, theseus.” a whispering chorus of voices echoes in his ears. “ _you’re going to do amazing_.”

green changes one last time, and this time, it’s someone truly familiar, someone he hadn’t realized he’d been missing this whole time.

his brother pulls him into a deep hug, the kind he only felt once in a blue moon. it’s warm like the fireplace during the holidays and it’s kind, kinder than he remembers and it lasts just long enough, and he doesn’t realize how reluctant he is to pull away until wilbur’s leading him towards a doorway full of blinding light.

“when you remember, make sure to say hello to philza from us! we’ve missed hearing from him.” blue says. it begs yet another question that tommy knows he can’t ask.

“… i’ll try.”

“we know.”

tommy pauses at the door, then turns around and embraces green again, who’s already shifted back. they don’t seem to take offense, letting him stay there for a moment; the light beneath his arms and fingers tingles and feels like how he always imagined clouds would.

“ _are you ready?_ ” the voices speak as one.

tommy steps back. “yeah. take me home.”

green cups a hand around his ear like a child whispering a secret-

“see you soon!”

-and then shoves him backwards into the blinding abyss.

and then he’s falling, and gravity and sound and the feeling in his fingers and toes returns to him, every emotion and memory cascading on him as he tumbles down, down, down, down, _down-  
  
—_

and tommy awakes with a jolt.

he’s woken up on the ground on top of a sleeping bag, with a headache already fading as he takes in his surroundings this time.

l’manberg uniform, signature knife in his pocket, armor removed and a distant ache in his chest. there’s bandages still wrapped around where an arrow once drove itself into his heart.

wilbur’s half-asleep even as sunlight pours through the window, leaning against a cabinet that’s been repurposed to hold meager rations and supplies. they’re in the camarvan. so at the very least, tommy hasn’t passed out and woken up somewhere stupid, like the sewers again.

the dream he’d been trying to make sense of as he awoke has already faded away and been replaced with a much more important dream, the one that he’s just now begun to remember killing him, claiming his country, demanding his _disc-_

he’s halfway through rooting through his ender chest and tucking his discs under his coat when wilbur notices him and stretches.

“tommy? how’re you feeling, did you just wake up?”

“wilbur, i’ve got a plan.”

wilbur blinks once, then twice, then takes in what tommy’s saying.

“no.”

“just let me try one last time, okay?”

“ _no_ , tommy, it’s over. we lost. fundy and tubbo are packing their things now.”

“i’ve got this, wil, i just know it-”

“and that’s _exactly_ what you told me last night before you went and got yourself killed.” wilbur snaps, face scrunched up in his ‘ _i’m in charge here_ ’ scowl. “i had to fucking drag your body back in here and wait for you to respawn while dream and his pals threw a whole goddamn party over- _are you even listening to me!_ ”

if wilbur was especially good at giving commands, tommy was doubly good at ignoring them. 

“i’m gonna meet dream, just trust me.”

wilbur sputtered with rage, the kind that hid how afraid he was.

“tommy, i am _not_ losing another person over this stupid war! you will _stay here_ and help me move everything, do you understand?”

“good morning dream!” tommy chirped into his communicator as he stepped out of the van. “care to meet up real quick? it’ll just take a second, yes- _yeah_ , i know it’s fucking early- no, this can’t wait for you to eat breakfast. get the hell out here.”  
  
“tommy!-” the van door slams shut.

the future vice president marches across the field, gripping the discs under his uniform. he can still fix this, for everyone.

his skin prickles with anxiety, and he knows wilbur will be even more pissed if this doesn’t work… but it will.

tommy knew it would.

**Author's Note:**

> once again thank you for reading and i do hope you enjoyed despite the lack of explanation for... everything lmao. i hope you have a good day/night
> 
> i don’t plan on turning this into any kind of series since personally i’m more comfortable doing short 1-3k word one-shots, but if people would like me to explain the lore more or link my tumblr so they can see my other notes about it or anything then please do let me know :0
> 
> and finally, bc someone of my friends noticed this: yes, the green and blue text in the end poem is related to the green and blue/the creatures i call ‘the parallels’ in this fic. that’s all, hope i was able to make at least a few ppl happy with my writing B)


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